Most of us have experienced the feeling. One minute you are sleepily chomping on a bit of toast, the next you find yourself screaming blue murder at somebody you don’t know and can’t see. No, you’ve not lost your mind. You are hopping mad about something you’ve heard on the radio and are yelling at the set. It’s a scene that regularly plays out in kitchens and cars across Britain – and in my house usually ends with my husband telling me to “calm down dear” in his best David Cameron voice. Tsk. Tsk.

The internet was set alight with the clip in which she screams (and when I say scream, I really mean it): “Will you just shut up!”

It’s utterly glorious. True radio gold. I’ve never heard anything quite like it and keep roaring with laughter every replay. My only quibble is that the worried-sounding host calmed Jones down too fast. He really should have let it go on and on.

Having presented radio programmes for the past few years, I can tell you that these moments of extreme human emotion are the ones us hosts live for. Radio rage is a sign that a programme is doing something right. Producers have cast the conversation brilliantly and the presenter has pushed the correct buttons. (And don’t forget tears too – magical.) For this is the stuff no one can turn off. It may sound callous, but it’s true. Of course, you don’t want this content all of the time – but these incidents, when they do happen, break the rhythm of a radio station’s day and will be the only part of a programme that everyone remembers.

Of course, it’s pretty white-knuckle stuff when you’re in the studio and the drama is fizzing live into your smoking headphones.

My old show on LBC was predominantly a phone-in programme, in which I would invite callers to spar with me or a guest. It lived or died by the quality of the discussion the callers brought. It was riveting because you never knew what was going to come out of the callers’ mouths.

Every week, without fail, we always had people on who seemed perfectly fine during the pre-air chat with my producers, but once they were given the waves? Wow. They let rip.

One of them, who was furious about increasing levels of immigration, sticks in the mind. As his ire grew, so did the proximity of my fingers to the fader – getting ready at any minute to dump this guy. He made some interesting points, but I could tell racist comments and profanities were not far from the tip of his tongue – and in the end I booted him off. But I let him go on just enough for the listener reaction to be huge, and thus ensured a very lively hour of radio indeed.

Likewise, whenever I guest present Woman’s Hour, there’s nothing more thrilling than when two experts really go for each other. The presenter almost becomes superfluous to proceedings, though it’s worth noting that the person who leaves the studio victorious is usually the one who keeps their cool and remembers to smile on air – a classic audio tactic.

Ultimately, brilliant radio is conversation on steroids. It’s the presenter’s job to push people’s boundaries so much that they reveal something they’ve never said before. And it is because radio is such an intimate sensory experience that it deeply affects us when we hear something we don’t like or someone lose their temper.

So as Elizabeth Jones licks her wounds today, she can console herself with the thought that while she lost her argument by losing her cool, she won overall – because she made a moment of unforgettable radio.